


You Know the Feeling

by mchaha



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Mutual Pining, Pining, eve and hugo are still pals, eve is an emotional wreck, post 3x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23882296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mchaha/pseuds/mchaha
Summary: Post 3x03 and "The Bus Incident"In which Eve and Hugo are still chums and Hugo can hack into Build-A-Bear hearts.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Hugo/Eve Polastri
Comments: 3
Kudos: 86





	You Know the Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I don't know anything about hacking into things or the privacy policy of Build-A-Bear for that matter. Also let's just assume it was a Build-A-Bear.
> 
> Title comes from a Christine and the Queens song.

She had been avoiding the bus for over a week now. Her life was now limited to a square mile radius around her home, trips to the grocery store foregone for the tiny bodega a block south of her tiny apartment. Her bank account was hurting with all of the Uber rides she had been ordering to go to and from work, the cash flow bleed stopping only after a ride in a nice Audi, the driver a young woman with striking jawline and a shade-too-dark blonde braid pulled tight down her back. 

(Once Eve remembered Villanelle knew where she lived and how easy it had been to track her down on the bus, she deleted her Uber profile and bought a bike.)

She’s lucky London was having a bit of a dry spell, knowing that trying to cycle to work in the rain could be the tipping point where she would suck it up and get back on the bus.

Rationally, she knew that Villanelle was no longer in the UK. When the birthday cake had shown up at the office a few days ago, she’d done her due diligence after chucking it off the roof, tracking down the bakery that had delivered it and convincing them to read off the phone number of the person who had placed the order. The area code hadn’t been one that Eve recognized right away, and after a quick search, she realized it was from somewhere in Spain.

Not even on the same fucking island anymore, and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about the blonde. It had been a shock to see the younger woman stalking her way to the back of the bus that day. It seemed so out of place for the extravagant assassin that Eve was almost sure she was dreaming for the moment before Villanelle opened her mouth. 

“Hi, Eve”

The audacity she had had.

A part of Eve knew they would see each other again. At this point, especially with Kenny’s death a mystery still looming, she knew that their strings were still tangled, doomed to come together in this strange web The Twelve had woven. She hadn’t expected it to be so soon though. The scar on her back was still an angry red, shocking her every time she happened to glance at it on the way in and out of the shower. It hadn’t yet had time to wear down into dull pink in the way that old scars do, a ghost of a once painful memory. Her mental scars were just as fresh, the memory of the axe lodging itself into Raymond’s shoulder on a loop behind her eyes every time she heard a loud noise, and the agony of pain from the bullet entering her back that afternoon in the Roman forum. They’re all intercut with flashes of memories of the hours that followed, from the tour group that shrieked at the sight of her bleeding out against the cool white marble, to the beeping of the machines in the hospital as she was coming out of the anesthesia after surgery.

So seeing Villanelle on the bus, smirking that stupid, attractive, smirk had her seeing red. She remembers lunging at the other girl, and in the next moment she’s suddenly with her back against the uncomfortable plastic of the public bus seats, blonde hair spilling into her vision, and an overwhelming scent of perfume clogging her nostrils. She doesn’t remember what the blonde had said, just remembers the incessant need to make her stop smirking, stop giving her a look like she knows more than Eve does.  
That’s why she kisses Villanelle, she tells herself. She wanted to throw the blonde completely off guard, and there was no way the blonde could have anticipated feeling lips against her own in the middle of a fist fight.

__ 

She really should have known that Villanelle would have figured out where she lived too. If the assassin could track down her bus schedule, something as basic as her new home address must have been a piece of cake. The personalized Build-A-Bear was a far cry from the floral arrangement and nothing compared to the full wardrobe and perfume from their first two encounters. Those gifts seemed like they existed in a different life, one where Eve was still removed from the blonde in a way, a government agent doing a job instead of a woman transfixed. 

Villanelle’s voice filtering through the tiny, blinking heart grounds her in a way. There’s still a part of her that is convinced she’d imagined the entire interaction, a sick side-effect of too many late nights trying to track down leads on Kenny’s killer. She plays the recording over and over again, zoning in and out of conscious thought, soothed by the buttery tone of the other woman’s words. 

That first night, she touched herself to the sound coming from the tiny heart, but the memories of that one night in Rome and the subsequent day’s events come flooding back and she’s reminded of the pain instead. 

The next morning, she stitches the bear back together instead, leaving its plastic organ sitting in a mug on the top of her dresser. The softness of the stuffed animal next to her each night helps her sleep more than she’s willing to admit.

—

It’s Hugo that ends up cracking it. They’d remained in distant contact since they’d both ended up in the Roman hospital. When Eve had woken up in her post-surgery haze, the young man had been sitting in a wheelchair at the foot of her bed, arm in a sling. He had been discharged from the hospital a few days before her, his injuries not as severe as her gunshot wound, but in their overlapping time they’d kept each other company playing cards and decidedly not talking about the elephant in the room.

When she had been allowed to travel back to London, they had met up a few times, commiserating on the loss of their job and the loss of a lifestyle they’d both held on a pedestal for so long. After she moved out of her and Niko’s flat and their geographical distance had expanded, their contact frequency had fallen. Hugo was the type of friend who would send snarky texts or crude memes in the middle of the night. She heard from him about once every other week, but their friendship worked that way.

He wasn’t able to make it to Kenny’s funeral, not that he would have shown up anyways, but three weeks after the fact, he had shown up on her doorstep backpack in hand.

The first night ended with them drunk, too many Gin and Tonics at the dive bar down the street. The body warmth next her in bed that nigh almost makes her cry, and in a rare instance, she almost misses Niko.

The next morning, Villanelle’s voice is what wakes her up.

She almost tricks herself into thinking that the warmth in her bed had come from the other woman’s body, but the dryness of her mouth and stale taste of Gin in her mouth reminds her of the previous night’s activities.

“What the fuck is this?”

Her eyes open to Hugo with the full coffee pot in one hand, the mug previously home to the tiny heart in the other. The object lays on the table in front of him, the red light teasing her every time it blinks.

“When did you get this?” He tries again.

Eve slides her hand over her face, up through her hair before twisting her hair into a messy bun at the back of her head.

“She found me about a week and a half ago.”

She recounts the pair’s encounter from the bus as it had happened a week ago, including the cake that had arrived at The Bitter Pill, but markedly leaving out the intimate details that she knows the man would berate her for. By the end, Hugo’s face is incredulous, no doubt assuming that the last thing Eve would want anything to do with is Villanelle. 

Quickly though, his face twists into a smirk, “How many times have you gotten yourself off to this?”

Eve doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response, instead giving him a pointed look.

“I put it in a place where I couldn’t see it for a reason, Hugo. I don’t need to get tangled in that mess again and I’m trying not to waste anymore of my life thinking about her.”

What she doesn’t tell him is that she hasn’t stopped thinking about Villanelle since she pressed her lips to the blonde’s, how every moment of her day is dedicated to wondering what the other woman is doing now and what she had thought of Eve’s tiny new living space.

She wonders if the assassin had gone through her things, rummaging through her makeup cabinet or making her way through the cupboards full of food. Or did she tuck the bear under the covers and leave in the same breath, not bothering to look around. How had she even known Eve had survived the bullet?

Hugo’s voice interrupts her thoughts. “Did you check this for a bug? It’s a wonder that these things aren’t illegal, with how easy they are to hack into and turn into listening devices. And it’s almost impossible to erase the data on these chips, and from what I remember, all of the recordings are saved in some giant server farm even though they make you think it’s been permanently deleted.”

Eve cocks her head, puzzled trying to remember any Build-A-Bear privacy infringement scandals passing her desk while she was employed at MI6.

Hugo slides into the seat across from her, “Don’t give me that look. You never had a shitty first job in retail?” 

He’s tinkering with the tiny heart, and she hears a crack before she has a chance to protest. Outside of the red shell, the recording device is a boring white disk. 

“I swear, parents will shell out money on ridiculous things just to get their kid to shut up for a second. Did you know you have to pay an extra 10 pounds for this stupid thing?”

He pops the disc open, uncovering an even tinier blinking red light, next to a switch. Flipping the switch, he ejects what looks like a tiny microSD card, like the ones that used to fit into cell phones before the iphone revolution began. 

He’s slid into some adapter and plugged it into his laptop before she can even understand what he’s doing.

“I should be able to figure out if it’s been collecting data since you got it, if I just- Ah, here it is.”

He slides his laptop so she can see the screen, scooting his chair over to sit beside her.

She’s never been an expert in reading code, preferring to be one of the people who analyze the data rather than one of the people to crack into it. It seems fairly straightforward though, which she’s thankful for considering the hangover throbbing behind her eyes. There’s a slew of numbers on the screen, each a time stamp and date, some with what looks like an mp4 file attached.

“Well the good news is that she hasn’t been listening in on you,” Hugo says. He continues, “Although I’m not sure if you would have really minded that, eh?”

She shoves his arm before scanning the screen again. There are six files attached to this tiny bear’s heart.

“If there’s only one message that plays back, what are these five other recordings?” She points to six file names, a combination of random letters and numbers. Two of the files are stamped with two separate dates, a few days apart, and the other four are stamped a few seconds apart, the date marked as the same day as the capital B “Bus Incident.”

Hugo does something to the code on his computer, and the next thing she knows an audio player pops onto the screen.

The first recording is high pitched and frankly annoying, the sound of some prepubescent girl singing happy birthday to her dad. There must have been some common sense in her mother on that one, realizing that her daughter unfortunately did not have any musical talent and hopefully opting for some other inanimate stuffed toy instead, handing the heart back over to the store clerk.

The next file is clearly a boy’s voice, though no words are spoken. Instead, there’s just a long, drawn out fart noise, before it trickles off into amused giggles. Hugo chuckles at that one, shaking his head with a grin.

“Oh come on Eve, even you have to admit that’s funny. Instead of making this a sappy little bear the kid just wanted a teddy that would fart on command.”

She rolls her eyes at him, heart rate already accelerating knowing who’s voice would come through from the next file.

“I should have shot you in the head.”

She sucks in a breath and feels Hugo still beside her. She can tell his eyes are on her, but she can’t stop staring, watching the tracking bar slide along the timeline as the clip plays on a loop.

“I should have shot you in the head.”

The pounding of her hangover shakes her out of it, and she darts her hand out to slap the space bar and stop the phrase.

Hugo breaks the silence, “We don’t have to listen to the other ones if you don’t want to.”

In the weeks immediately following her return to London, and amidst the gradually falling apart of the life she was used to, Eve had taken up meditation as a way to hit pause on her surroundings. 

She found that she was horrible at it, but there were some techniques that had helped with the panic attacks. 

She closes her eyes and draws in a deep breath. Without opening them, she speaks again.

“Just play the other two. Don’t let them loop over and over though.”

When she hears Hugo click to the next file, she reopens her eyes, focusing in on the first object she can place behind the computer’s screen. That stupid fucking bear.

“I should have shot you in the face and watched you die. I-”

She hears Hugo quickly click stop on that file and clicks to the next one. It’s the pause that follows the click of Hugo’s mouse that forces her eyes back down to the screen. The other recordings had begun right away, but the tiny vertical bar is tracking along the time line, an indicator that he had clicked play. It’s not until four seconds in that Villanelle’s voice rings out, as clear as if she had been in standing in the room with them.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

In Eve’s peripheral she sees Hugo’s hand reaching for the mouse to stop it, just like she had asked of him. Before he can get there, her hand darts out to stop him.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Again, some part of her knew that Villanelle had some sort of weird obsession with her, similar and yet altogether different from Eve’s own fascination with psychopaths that had turned into a fascination with this one in particular. 

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

It’s the raw emotion in her voice that’s different this time. Eve wonders if the blonde had let herself be vulnerable for a moment, the freedom and illusion of complete privacy an excuse for her to admit to this tiny bear heart that she was experiencing something unexpected.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

The bathroom door closes then, Hugo having disappeared from the seat beside her without Eve even realizing. 

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

If this had been recorded before they’d even crossed paths on the bus, she wonders how the blonde was feeling now. It sends a thrill down Eve’s spine, imagining Villanelle imagining her. 

As far as Eve was concerned, they were on an even playing field now. The game had just begun.

(If she pulls out her phone to voice record the audio clip on repeat while Hugo’s still in the bathroom, well nobody’s perfect.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @mchaha.


End file.
